


looking out on the day

by akc



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Banter, Fluff, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 22:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16564058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akc/pseuds/akc
Summary: Sometimes Goro has to remind himself that everything he has now is real. He has to remind himself that he isn’t in a purgatory. Akira is really real, and he isn’t going to suddenly disappear.





	looking out on the day

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this four months ago or so... it's literally just fluff there's like a sliver of a plot if you squint

It rained today, even though it wasn’t in the forecast.

There was a Farmers’ Market nearby, and in the morning Akira asked, _Wanna go to it?_ and Goro had said _Sure._ So they went to the Farmers’ Market under the hot sun and in the awful humidity, sleeves rolled up as far as they could go.

“Whoever gets the better gift wins,” Akira had challenged a short while after they’d begun roaming the tents.

“Wins what?” was Goro’s response. He couldn’t hide his curiosity — though he was always good at putting on quite the sturdy mask, curiosity was the one thing that seemed to be able to slip out from it. Perhaps it’s the inner detective still lingering, or something.

“Well — I don’t know. The winner gets whatever they want.”

That had sounded interesting enough, and so Goro simply said, “Okay.”

They split up from there. Goro… had no idea what to buy Akira, and felt that the best course of action would be to roam around until he saw something that jumped out at him. At the time, he paid little attention to the dark clouds swimming overhead, dismissing them as a passing thing.

In the end, he had bought Akira a collection of cookies shaped like cats with various colors piped on top of them. When he met up with Akira later, on a bench, box in hand, that was when it started raining.

Or rather — downpouring.

Immediately Goro had grabbed Akira’s wrist and yanked him into a street alley under some roofing. They stood, staring despondently at the gloomy sky.

“It’s not going to stop for another hour,” Akira had said, scrolling around on his phone.

“Hm.” Goro rubbed his forehead. “May as well run home then. I don’t particularly want to stand here all afternoon.”

Akira said _Okay,_ and they ran home hand-in-hand in the rain and heat and were completely drenched by the time they stepped inside the apartment. Very unfortunate.

In his head, Goro had compiled a list of things to do: one, put his wet clothes in the laundry bin; two, shower; three, change and four, wipe up the water on the floor.

He had repeated this list to Akira, and his response was, “Mmm, so meticulous. That’s sexy. How about you show me what you bought me, too?”

Goro flushed stupidly, averting his eyes in favor of staring at the floor. He then mumbled all the way to the bathroom and began working through his list.

And that, really, is the explanation as to why he’s now sitting on the couch with enough jittery nerves to turn on a lightbulb. He is facing Akira, legs criss-cross, mimicking the other boy’s posture though not intentionally. The box of cookies are in his hands and the cardboard is pressed in a bit from how tightly he’s gripping it.

It's silly, being so nervous about something like this. Being nervous about  _cookies._ He just wants Akira to like what he got him.

“Open them at the same time,” he says, straightening out his back in an attempt to seem more assertive.

“Sure, whatever you want.” Akira places his fingers underneath the flap of his box and pauses. Goro does the same. “Go.”

They pull up the box flaps and stare.

In his box, Akira has cookies as well, and they’re from the same vendor, except they aren’t cats. They’re an assortment of different-sized hearts of various colors. It’s both shocking and charming how sappy Akira can get; it's easy to forget what with how half of the things he says are jokes.

Goro’s heart is probably physically growing in size.

Truthfully, whenever he thinks too long and hard about how kind Akira is to him he feels absolutely overwhelmed. People have never been _the way_ Akira is with Goro. Two years later and he still isn’t tired of Goro; he still texts him, still holds his hand, still kisses him. Maybe it’s a silly thing to consciously think about — how Akira ‘isn’t tired of him.’ But that’s how it has been Goro’s whole life: a cycle of everyone constantly abandoning him, like he’s an old toy ready to be replaced with a brand new one.

Sometimes Goro has to remind himself that everything he has now is real. He has to remind himself that he isn’t in a purgatory. Akira is _really real,_ and he isn’t going to suddenly disappear. He loves Goro and he tells him every day; oftentimes he feels like a bother with his constant need for assurance, but Akira never complains.

Goro doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it.

“Smart minds think alike and all that, I guess,” Akira says, reaching for a cat cookie. “Though you bought six and I only bought five, so I guess that makes you the winner.”

“Is that how it works?” Goro asks vaguely, swimming somewhere in his brain.

Akira smiles. “Do you think _I_ should be the winner, then?”

“ _No,_ I just… thought it was strange how quickly you decided. Almost like you let me win.”

While Goro  _does_ want Akira to win because he wonders what he would ask for his prize to be, that’s a bit of an analytical rationale. Too analytical to say aloud, even. 

He seems to have at least momentarily fazed Akira with that statement. The other boy looks at him, eyes searching, before saying, “You’ve got me.”

“Have I?” Goro's lip jerks up.

“You have.”

“All right then.” He puts his box on the table and takes a heart cookie. It moves about wildly in his hands while he speaks, gesticulating a bit too dramatically. “I’m going to…”

“Interrogate me?” Akira finishes, leaning back against the arm rest.

Interesting. Goro smirks. “Sure.” For effect he pulls his gloves on tighter. It feels a bit silly, but that's all right, because so is everything else. "My first concern has to do with an idea I'm entertaining."

"And what would that idea be, detective?"

"You wanted me to win from the start."

Akira touches the ends of his hair, looking off to the side a bit. “I don’t know about that. What do I get out of wanting that?”

He’s funny, bluffing like that while playing with his hair and trying to look all innocent. Goro’s not really sure what’s going on now; one minute he was near tears about some heart shaped cookies and now he’s pretending to interrogate Akira.

“Perhaps you’re hoping I’ll ask for something specific. Or, you might be interested in what I want my prize to be.” Goro figures Akira's probably thinking along the same lines, more interested in knowing what the other wants rather than asking for something himself.

“That could be it.” Akira sighs and adjusts his position, laying lower down against the arm rest. “But I could just ask you what you wanted your prize to be _for my own_ prize, if I had won.”

Goro hums. “You’re not really the type to do that,” he asserts. “I think you’re lying.”

“Am I?”

“Hmmm.” He furrows his brow, debating what to do next. “Since I’m the figure of authority, I’ve decided that you win.” Pause. “If I won, I was going to ask you what you would do if _you_ won, since you were so eager to know.”

“You’re already tired of interrogating me? I must be boring.”

Goro opens his mouth to protest, eyes widening, but Akira quickly adds, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, don't worry. I know you don't think I'm boring."

Always with the reassurance. Goro appreciates it, even though it makes him feel like a nuisance. "Oh."

"Anyway, for my prize, I’d like a kiss — please.” The words sound like honey, all lathered in warmth and sweetness.

“That's it?” It's so simple. In fact, the simpleness of it makes Goro feel some... _way_. Akira could have asked for anything, anything at all, and he merely asked for a kiss. It’s so earnest that it makes his heart ache with adoration.

He crawls on top of Akira’s thighs and settles himself comfortably, placing the cookie he was holding on the table. “Okay, then,” he whispers, and cradles one of Akira’s cheeks against his hand. He leans down and plants a kiss on Akira’s mouth, gentle and slow, letting the boy below him play with his hair all the while.

He lifts his head a bit, studying Akira’s eyes. They are overflowing with fondness, and Goro thinks that if Akira ever asked him to steal the sun, Goro would do it without a moment of consideration.

“You really do things to me, you know,” he says, relaxing in the sensation of Akira’s hands running through his hair.

“I guess it’s part of my charm.”

Goro laughs quietly and tilts Akira’s chin up with his thumb and index finger. “I mean it, though.” He leans down once again and kisses up his neck. Akira hums and wraps his arms around Goro's shoulders.

“I love you, Akira, I really, really do.” He’s mumbling now, repetitively. Part of him worries he’s being too over-the-top but it’s the absolute truth. After being used and tossed around for years, Akira has given him an entire sky blooming with hope and chances and welcome changes. He broke the cycle that Goro thought he was tied to by fate. He gave Goro something worth living for that wasn’t coated in hatred like his feelings toward Shido were. "I'm sorry I don't say it very often."

"Hey, you don't have to apologize for something like that," Akira says. "I know that you do."

Akira has given Goro things he couldn’t have dreamt of having a few years ago. Once he failed to kill Shido, Goro felt true, raw purposeless. His goal in life was to destroy, break down, demolish Shido — he never saw any life past that point. Truthfully, all he could see himself doing at the time was inevitably killing himself shortly afterwards from a quiet bullet to the head. With no goal, it left him no purpose. With no purpose, it left him without a desire to be alive. He was like a hollow wind blowing through a cave.

It was so difficult to accept Akira’s kindness at first; it was painful to watch the boy he tried to kill be nothing but patient with him.

For weeks and weeks he saw himself as a spectacle everyone was pitifully watching. 

Before, Goro was a puppet suspended by strings — it’s what he always had been.

Letting himself cut the strings down was freeing. He wanted life after purposelessness. The epiphany — it came one night while he laid in the dark next to a sleeping Akira — that he could shape his existence any way he wanted released the fetters wrapped around him. Something as simple as seeing another person breathe was enough to wrench out the emotions that were burning him alive.

And so they healed together like a scar would — with the past still there, but overshadowed by new tissue.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying into Akira’s shoulder until there’s a tap on his back.

“Are you okay?”

Goro sits up and wipes his eyes. “Yes,” he says with a sniff. “I’m really happy to be with you, Akira, in this apartment, with this couch and kitchen and decorations.”

Akira looks at him, mouth slightly open, and says, “I'm glad.”

It seems like there’s something else he wants to say so Goro waits and rubs circles into Akira’s wrists.

“I get the feeling that sometimes you worry you’re not giving me enough,” he begins. “Something like you take and never return.”

"I won't say that isn't true." He pauses. “What does that have to do with right now?” 

“Not much, but I wanted to say it. I’ll elaborate.” He shifts his hips awkwardly. “You think that, but it’s not the case. I know a lot of people, and I know a lot about all of those people, but they don’t know as much about me.”

Goro doesn't know what to say; he isn't sure where exactly this is going. “I see.”

“And I mean — obviously people like Ryuji know a lot about me. But it’s not the same.”

Goro feels like his vocal cords are shrinking. “Not the same?” 

“You’ve seen every part of me. You’ve seen me sleeping, and buying embarrassing things like those stupid Hello Kitty bandaids from a few days ago, and having the worst days and having the best days and you never waver in how you act around me. People get nervous when I don’t have good days, because I’ve always been the leader and it’s out of character, I guess.”

There is silence.

“But you, Goro — you’re someone I’ll always be able to rely on. Even with everything that’s happened — I can understand what you were thinking at the time, sort of." He smiles, eyes crinkling. "I've learned a lot from you."

Goro still doesn’t speak, but he’s sure his eyes have the sky in them.

“That’s all I wanted to say. I love you and I love your hands and hair and I’m happy, too, in this apartment with this couch and kitchen and these decorations.”

The world is still, stuck, frozen in time as it tends to do when Akira gets all honest and says things like this. Part of Goro doesn't know how to process the words because they're so genuine that the valves in his heart stutter.

After a moment, he whispers, “You’re something else, you know.”

“I know.”

"And so modest, too."

“Hmm.” Akira tugs him down for another kiss and it’s like the light from a comet. Their lips and hands mingle in the quiet apartment, the wall clock ticking along in the background.

Goro could lay here forever, probably, touching Akira’s face and tongue and dancing his hands along the boy’s chest. It’s only them. The world and its habit of unleashing cruel fate is kind and gives them space and time separate from everything else when they’re together like this.

Goro thinks, vaguely, that his love for Akira is like a painting, or something equivalently poetic in a disgusting way — tender and knowing and presented in a plethora of different hues and shades and colors that describe better how he feels more than anything else. Younger Goro would roll his eyes at these thoughts.

“I think it's stopped raining,” Goro mumbles on Akira’s mouth.

“Mmm.”

“Do you want to get dinner?” He sits up, pulling Akira along with him.

“Sure, in a few minutes,” Akira says, clearly quite distracted as he settles Goro into his lap. He resumes his kissing, all breathy and wet and warm. 

The cookies sit on the coffee table, tragically forgotten.


End file.
